fitness frivolity and culinary wizardry peppered with life musings, fried in adventure.

Dirty words, bad ass moves.

Today I took what is required of a person who has made a commitment to this crazy thing we call Crossfit: an elements class. This is super important, as it teaches you the fundamentals of lifting, and all with a PVC pipe to start, so there’s no pressure.

I learned quite a bit of things today, some of which make me feel uncomfortable and others that I think I could straight up murder in a WOD.

CLEAN

It’s funny, because this a movement that is actually used in every day life – picking an object up off the floor and onto our shoulders.

I mean, it’s obviously not that simple, but the basics of it are right there. And so I present to you, in this graphic from allthingsgym.com, a clean:

Variations of a clean include:

Power Clean – “Power” describes where you catch the bar; the bar begins on the ground and you land in a partial squat instead of a full squat.

Hang Clean – “Hang” describes where the bar starts; the lift begins in the “hang” position and ends in a full squat.

Hang Power Clean – The bar starts at hip level and you end in a partial squat.

CLEAN AND JERK

The first part is what you see above, and the second part requires the lifter to dip down, bending the knees, and then drive the bar upward, like so:

Seriously, if you can do this at a high weight, you’re gonna look at happy as her. I was doing this with NOTHING ON A BAR and I was like OW.

SNATCH

This is an incredibly fast, and incredibly terrifying. I seriously still cannot wrap my head around these movements. Like, I have been watching YouTube videos and still have no idea what is going on. But, it’s so beautiful looking. Like every time I see one I hold my breath as it’s happening and go “Wowww” when it’s done. I dare you to YouTube this and not be entranced for hours.

This maneuver takes the weight straight from the ground to straight overhead.

RIGHT?! Yea, I know, probably not as cool from the picture, so get to YouTubing.

I will be employing these movements a ton in the coming days, PVC pipe free. I can’t wait to see what that is like.

I think my favorite part of these lifts at the moment are the fact that they allow crossfitting shirts such as this: